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"Coal Exports Contradict Obama's Climate Pledge, Critics Say"

"Environmental experts who remain unimpressed with President Barack Obama's war-on-carbon rhetoric point to one key reason for concern that's off most Americans' radar: U.S. coal exports."

"A push to expand coal mining operations in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, and to build three ports in Oregon and Washington to ship the fuel to Asia, could create more national and global environmental impact than a Canadian company's proposal to ferry Albertan tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast via the Keystone XL pipeline. Yet these remote projects are not getting the attention they deserve, critics suggest, and they fear Obama may be overlooking, apathetic to, or even supportive of them.

'If we were serious about doing something about global warming, the federal government certainly wouldn't be talking about controlling the burning of coal in the U.S. on the one hand while encouraging the export of coal to the rest of the world to be burned,' said Thomas M. Power, research professor and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montana in Missoula."